OK, one more complaint about Borders and that’s it. I’m doing the personality section. The ask questions and I can either
Strongly disagree
Disagree
Agree
Strongly agree
Here are some of the stupid questions;
It is maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free - I think most people feel that way You look back and feel bad about things you’ve done - Don’t we all have regrets? People’s feelings are sometimes hurt by what you say - I think we’ve all hurt someone’s feelings at one time or another
And there were a couple of others I should have posted.
Because I need money to exchange for goods and services, and while I could get that money through illegal means and much less effort, your company seemed like the perfect combination of a job that requires minimal effort and a legitimate source of income.
I like the way you think. OK, you can mug people for me and I’ll get a cut. To expand your business, get people to mug for you and take a cut from them. They can get recruits, and so on. Everybody wins…except for the very last recruit of course.
I had an application for a grad school, I think it was, where the question was how much computer experience I’d had, and the form space was similarly limited. I responded “enough to be able to figure out a workaround to your form being too short”, or something like that.
None of these questions are stupid. They’re designed to elicit information that you wouldn’t ordinarily provide and to provide somewhat of a profile on you.
#1: This is to see if you are judgemental and jump to conclusions. How do you know the person is guilty? What are you basing that on? #2: Criminal past that he’s not telling us about? Unable to move forward? Acts out impulsively? Fights? #3: Loudmouth? Aggressive? Opinionated and overbearing?
These are all personality traits that would be undesirable in a customer service position.
You’re rolling the dice. Depends on how good a read of your interviewer you are.
be honest but offend the suck up
dial it up to 11 on the amp, and alientate the quant guy
tell 'em you need the money, but those toiling for more will be offended
ad nauseum
There is no universal answer unless you can read what the interviewer wants to hear.
I recently interviewed for a corporate job within my group for a position I was way overqualified for but would have done a killer job. During the interview, I basically said “I’ve got an autistic child and need to relocate my family to the US, this job is perfect way for me to knock it out of the park for the next two years while getting settled.” eg, I’m overqualified but hey I don’t give a fuck because I’ll do a great job and accomplish my real goal of getting my family settled.
Bzzzzzzzzt, wrong answer.
I was interviewing (remember with my group that I have a 8 year track year record with of doing exceptional work) with someone that wanted the amp dialed up to 12 if not at least 11. “I have dreamed of doing this job since I was sucking mommy’s teat, and worked like a slave for the last 3 decades to build up my experience set to do x, and I’m now begging for a chance.” And the worst thing is I probably would have not been cheerleading-ish enough if I had taken that approach.
(good thing is I found a much better position with in a group that shares my values of being good rather than talking shit)
Wow, those are all big leaps from vaguely worded questions. I think I answered them right though. In the past I just answered honestly but this time I mostly answered what I thought they wanted…although I’ve heard if you try to answer everything perfectly they’ll ding you for that too. Anyway, I didn’t know the questions had such sinister assumptions behind them. Damn!
It’s a stupid question. The fact is you know nothing about us (yet) other than what we do, which is the same as what any other firm in the same industry does.
That’s a good point, actually. I can recall one interview that sticks out in my mind as being really, really bad, and it wasn’t me - it was them. They only asked me ridiculous, clichéd questions - they didn’t do anything to find out anything about me or my history or my future, and the way they set things up I couldn’t figure out a way to get any valid information across. Big waste of time - I can only imagine that they don’t get very suitable people in their company.
Let’s face facts. A lot of entry-level jobs like this involve talking to customers and clients. And a lot of those people are going to be asking questions that are obvious or even stupid.
What’s the best way to figure out how you’ll handle that situation? Ask you a stupid question and see how you answer it. Do you give the interviewer a snide answer or a sarcastic answer or even a blank look like you can’t think of an answer? Then that’s probably how you’re going to answer a customer when they ask an inane question.
They want to see that you can give a reasonable answer to an obvious question while keeping a straight face and not condescending to the asker. Which is, in fact, telling the person who asked you the question what they want to hear.
Questions like these have been around for many years and have been developed by HR folks in conjunction with psychological consultants and analysts. They can’t be too obvious or people will lie about the answers. On the other hand, anybody who has taken the MMPI will recognize the patterns immediately.
The first role of a job interview is to decide if the candidate is capable and competent to do the job. If the job isn’t very specialized or skilled the interviewer should be able to make a yes or no determination very quickly. The second part of the interview is the more important part and is used by the interviewer to see if you are a good fit for the company. If there are a large number of qualified candidates, the deciding factor will always be personality.
Try not to think of the interview as an adversarial process, if you think the interviewer is just a corporate drone you have to get past in order to get a paycheck then I’m betting you get very few offers. That attitude is pretty easy to see through. Instead, approach the interviewer as though he’s a friend of a friend you just met at a social function. Be polite, friendly and stay positive in all of your answers. Treat the interview as a conversation about the job, talk freely about yourself and your qualifications, but also engage the interviewer to talk about the position, the company, and the team you’ll be working with. The goal isn’t unlike a first date, you want to leave the interviewer thinking you are qualified, bright, easy to talk to, and socially adept.
If you aren’t getting many offers or callbacks to interviews then I would suggest working on social and conversational skills. One of the groups I’ve found that can really help is Toastmasters. In addition to prepared speeches their meetings have a section where people are called up to speak for 2 minutes about an impromptu topic. This is a skill that is invaluable when it comes to interviewing.
Law form interviews for articling positions are often particularly wierd, because everyone knows none of the applicants knows anything useful, and at least in my jurisdiction all the interviews are held in the same week.
Heh, the second interview at the lawfirm I ended up working for was all about the M.C Escher print pattern on my tie.
That was by no means the wierdest interview I heard of. One friend of mine was interviewing at a firm, and happened to let slip somehow that he was Scottish. The interviewer’s face lit up. “So, have you ever swung a Claymore?” Well, no. Then the guy opened a closet next to his desk and pulled out - a full sized claymore sword. And started to hack into the boxes of files next to his desk. “Like this! And That!”.
He didn’t get the job, so I suppose his reaction to that wasn’t what the interviewer was looking for.
Thanks for the laugh.